So after scooping up mad cash in the million and running hot in other various forms of NLH over the next week and moving into my new apartment, I started playing more and more like I did in my true grind days. My streak of grinding was broken for various reasons when I went back to NY for thanksgiving, so on one hand I was upset because I had a good routine going and felt 'in the zone' but on the other hand I got to spend quality time with my family and see tons of friends from high school that I haven't seen some of in a year or two so no real complaints there. Monday I got back to MD and I already feel like I'm back on my game after only putting in one(albeit long) session.

Earlier while I was thinking about the poker world and everything it involves as I often do, although this is obvious, without thinking about it it's easy to overlook how thankful winning players should be that poker boomed to the extent that it did. It basically changed my entire life in almost every aspect as I'm sure it has many of yours, if not directly because of the lifestyle that it creates, then indirectly due to the options you have available because of networking/financial freedom/etc.

Though this is nothing ground breaking I felt like putting into words how I feel about poker and how happy it makes me.

Also, while I didn't put in any grind sessions during my stay in NY I was able to pump out a 10-20 video and a 3 part 5-10 video. I have them saved and just need to produce them properly so expect those sometime soon. That's all for now, gl at the tables everyone.

-Andrew

So yesterday I decided to play Sunday tournaments because I'm staying with Charder and he was playing. I played a pretty full scheduele, though Jay probably played 2x as many tournaments as I did =]. I built up a bunch of stacks in things early on and spewed some of them off and got unlucky for some of them, and eventually I was 1 tabling the million. I had a nice stack and was really able to focus and pick up reads and by the time the final table bubble rolled around I won some crucial flips and my hands held and went into the final table as the chip leader. I lost the lead for a little while with 5 left but regained it and won a huge flip to enter the HU match as a slight CL. I felt like I played really well HU but there is always a certain luck factor when you play any poker at all of course, and especially so with stacks in the 20-40bb range. It's funny because I feel like most if not all of the all-in hands HU were just entirely composed of hidden luck, by that I mean if the hands were reversed my opponent would get his chips in with my hand as well and mine with his. Alas it was not meant to be but 2nd place was good for ~$127k. Christian had 5% so congrats to him as well!

I'm leaving for the amtrak in a few hours and plan to make a 6max video ASAP when I get back at stakes to be determined depending on what games are running.

FOXWOODS!!!

I'm currently at Foxwoods for the WPT and 5k prelim. I got here Sunday and played the 5k on Monday which I got a nice stack in but ran into some absurdly dumb spots and busted a 50bb stack at the 4-8 level before the level was over. Very happy with how I played throughout though.

Day 1 of the 10k main was mostly frustrating because my table was composed of extremely tight players to my left, and one extremely loose one to my direct right but I could never get anything going. Starting stack was 30k and I was neither below 20 or above 40 until the last level where I started with 33k, got up to ~70k, before finishing the day with 15k. I was happy with my play despite getting it in in the 70k pot w ~3.5% equity(AK no bdfd to 77 on AxJc7c). Action went player to my direct right open to 1600 at 3-6-75, very active etc, I make it 4650 in HJ w AKdd. Button who has been playing a lot of pots with opener flats and says something like, 'only because you're in it'(pointing to opener) and opener flats. Flop action is check, bet 7200, fold, tank for like 2 minutes, shoves ~20k more, I snap. He says, 'Do you have three aces?'. I'm like wtf no, he shows, runs out Q, T. After that he continued to open a ton of pots as he had been(j5o in hj, 39s utg), and absolutely crush everyone including me. I felt so frustrated not being able to own him despite having position because he was just making hands and as time went on the stacks got shallower so there was less room for me to abuse him. Anyway, shortly after I got to 70 after sucking out I squeezed the guy who flatted button in the previous hand and a tight middle aged guy w AKhh(1800-8500), opener flatted w 30k total and 33, flop J83hh and I whiff it. From there I lost a few more small pots to end the day. After a day of boring annoying poker though I had a nice dinner with Christian, Rob, Alex, and Travis.

Day 2 we started at 400-800/100 and since I remember it more clearly I'll do a more in depth write up. I started the day with Nick Shulman to my direct left and Chad Brown two to my right who I have played with before more then a few times. I didn't recognize anyone else except the kid to Shulman's left who I had been told is a decent TAG, but right off the bat I opened to HJ to 2250 w TT and a 13.5k stack, BB defends and we check it down on a AcJc5x5x4x board and he shows J4hh. So after that and a few more hands I felt good about my table and confident I could generalize what kind of styles everyone would be playing. I get down to 6600 finding no spots to put any chips in the pot when the HJ who is the J4hh guy from before opens to 3k and I find AQo in the BB and beat his ATo.

A hand I saw that actually happened at the 4-8 level went, UTG shove for ~17k(he had previously open shoved 20k but had also open raised a few times and limped once), UTG1 who is the J4hh guy insta puts out chips that end up being 32k. Their hands? A5o and ATo respectively.

After this I win a few small pots and have ~17k going into the 500-1,000/150 level. First hand back from break I'm one before the hijack and the guy to my direct right opens to 3k, I find AQo again and shove, folds to him he asks for a count tanks it and calls AKo, queen in the door though and I hold to get up to around 40. After that I blind off for a while getting no hands and only getting playable hands when there is action that makes them unplayable in front of me. Our table breaks and my new table seems really good.

The first hand back from break entering the 600-1200/200 level I find KK and raise to 3600 in the HJ, get flatted by the button. It comes QQT w two diamond I have the Kd. I bet 6.6k into 10.8k intending to get it in for my remaining ~19 or so, but he folds. Very next hand I open AKo to 3600 and get flatted by the BB. It comes A89r, he c/c 5400, turn is a 4 bringing a fd and he checks again. I assume he's an internet kid because of how he looks and clearly I'm perceived as an internet kid(and aggressive regardless of how I have been playing which is much truer than I ever used to think), so I opt to shove for a slight overbet of ~27 into ~21. He tanks and fold. I like my play here though because I think the majority of his range is Ax and I think shoving looks weaker than betting something smaller given stacks, additionally when the FD turns people have more semi-bluffs to put you on and thus have more reason to call.

I get moved from this table unfortunately to a new table and the first hand I see play out when I sit down is a middle aged Indian man opens the HJ to 3800, David 'The Dragon' Pham 3bets to 13.8k on the button, opener calls. Flop is KhTx6h, check, 20k, shove for ~41k more. Pham tanks for a solid 3 minutes before calling w AQo no heart and the openers JTo no heart holds. I don't find any pots to play before the end of the level where I have around 40k coming back to the 800-1600/200 level. Very first hand I open the CO to 4800 and the Indian guy makes it 23k on the button. I'm kind of scared because he's very cally pf but he's too spazzy to consider folding so I stick it in and he has the other two tens. Throughout this level I open a few times and get 3b twice which is absurd because the players to my left were all giving me respect. I attribute this to terrible hidden luck, basically any time I had a hand worth opening someone else picked up a big one behind me. I finish the level with a little over 40.

First hand back from the break at 1k-2k/300 I find QQ utg and open to 6k, 3 different people ask me how much I have but eventually everyone folds. I opened 3 more hands this level, once 89s on the button and the BB called who had been fairly straightforward but showed the propensity to defend his BB very light. It came KJTr giving me a bdfd and he checked to me. In retrospect with 15.7k in the pot and approximately 45k behind I think I definitely should bet like 10.5k on the flop and shove the turn because he will peel a lot of pair+sd hands and just single pair hands but fold to my turn shove with them on blanks(at least this is what I would assume from this particular player because I had played with him almost all day). I decided to check in the heat of the moment though because this flop hits a lot of hands, turn is an 8 bringing a bdfd he bets 7k I fold and he shows me a jack. I also think another benefit for betting flop and jamming turn is that a lot of his hands that would call my turn shove will rarely get to the turn because they'll c/r the flop and I'll easily fold. I opened two more pots in LP and got 3bet both times which again frustrated me beyond belief because of how tight I was playing. Eventually I was down to ~28k and shoved 9Ts two before the hijack, unfortunately Pham had JJ in the SB and out I went.

I was less happy with my play throughout the main event than I was in the 5k but I still think I played well. That said, I am continuing to learn a lot about live poker and am very much looking forward to the WSOP where I can hopefully fix my leaks at a faster rate with there being so many tournaments to volume in, where as currently it's like one or two tournaments a month.

As far as the next few month go I've decided I'm definitely not going to do any traveling before PCA/Aussie in early January. I'm going to be moving into a hella ballin apartment on Tuesday and chill out there...

After my last blog entry I was headed to Lonodn for WSOPE and EPT. We got there a few days before WSOPE and had planned to grind a ton online during this trip, but that's always easier said than done when traveling if not because of the cool stuff going on in the areas you visit, the internet being terrible. So I mostly just hung out around London and played the live events as well as some live cash. The former was fun and the latter two not so much. In WSOPE I got sucked out on for two big pots which was really disappointing considering the structure was incredibly good.

In the EPT I lost a big flip early on day one which was whatever, EPT structures are pretty bad so winning pots like that early are crucial. There was a funny pot in EPT London though where someone limped, John Phan accidentally minraised having intended to limp behind with 8 BB's, the button 3bet, the limper flatted, John Phan stuck it in and although the button couldn't technically isolate he just insta jams and the limper insta calls. And the look on the dealers face was like, 'eh, I guess everyone wants to be all-in so whatever'. For those interested, the limper had JJ, John Phan had Q8hh, the button had 88 and the board ran out QxTh7h5x8x.

I ended up playing the EPT high roller event after selling off a good % of myself and got KK to AA in level one in a spot where there was no avoiding it for a lot of my chips, then shoved K7s into Juanda's BB from the SB which was marginal but imo optimal. He tanked for a minute and a half or so before calling with AJs and out I went. After London was over I went back to the US for a few days before heading out to Niagara for the WPT.

Niagara was my first ever WPT and I was pretty impressed with how the tournament was run. The structure was better than EPT's and the staff was much better, I can't imagine hands like the aforementioned one would occur here. I played really well on day 1 and built up a big stack but got crushed quick on day two getting in a bunch of really stupid unavoidable spots.

After Niagara me and 6 friends took a limo to turning stone casino in upstate new york for the 5k HPT(heartland poker tour) event. The structure for this was pretty awesome but unfortunately there were only 49 runners. I actually think I ran pretty bad throughout the tournament but the structure was good enough that I was able to chip up and conserve an above average stack for most of the tournament until we approached the TV final table bubble where I lost a few too many big pots and entered the TV FT with only 82k at 1500-3k-500 ante with 980k chips in play though I had as many as ~160k at my peak. I ended up busting 5th for ~18k. TV poker is kind of wack though, it's obviously all really glorified and hyped up and kind of tilting but it is what it is and is one of the main reasons poker is so popular right now so I can't really hate on it.

So that sums up the end of my travels thus far as I sit here in a turning stone room waiting to fly home. My plan for the next few months is to put live tournaments aside for a little while and grind online and make a ton of money. I still might play foxwoods in early November, but if I skip that I won't play anything before PCA and maybe EPT Prague. GL everyone.

So, after my last blog entry I played the Macau highroller event that had 20k start bank at 50-100 blinds w 1 hour 15 minute levels and managed to bust it in the first level when I got aa in v kk and couldn't hold. Later that night I played the WCOOP 10k high roller that had 25k start bank at 25-50 blinds w 30 minute levels(same strucutre as WCCOPME afaik) and managed to bust that in the first level as well 4betting 53s and flopping bottom two v top set on a 953r board. Pretty easy stack off even 500bbs deep all things considered and given how the board ran out.

I also played a 1k 6m side event in Macau that didn't have a particularly great structure but I got deepish before busting(not itm). I actually had fun playing and really trying to figure out some of the finer points of live play which is something I don't do as much as I should. By this I just mean trying to pick up more off how people act when they have strong/weak hands and trying to stay as solid as I can whether or not I have anything. I used to play a lot of live before I got involved online so I think I'm a better live player than most online guys but nonetheless I still have a lot to learn.

After I was tournament busto I played the 500-1k HKD game and the lineup was as follows: Johnny Chan, tsarrat/Brian i think?, Yevginney/atimos/online guy as well, good2cu, David Saab/live guy, myself, and Buck21/online guy. Ended up losing a little(about 100bbs iirc), but the game was nothing spectacular. Wasn't very tough or soft and no one was doing anything retarded. Add in that it was live poker and we were getting 20 hands an hour and raked from here to high heavens and it's not the most profitable thing ever. I played David Saab later in the week HU for a little while at 200-400 HKD and lost some more money. To his credit he played much better than I thought he would and it was fun to play some live HU and straddle the button despite losing some money.

Now that Macau is over with, looking back I have to say I had a good time. I met some awesome people and had more fun than not. If I go back next year though I'll definitely be staying at the Venetian, it's just so much nicer than the Waldo and it's much more convenient since a lot of the places people want to go to are in the Venetian. Also before I stop talking about Macau I want to add that I saw Cirque De Soliel one night and it was really cool. Definitely something I'll be looking to check out in the future and probably in vegas during the upcoming summer.

So then it was off to Barcelona. The trip that turned out to be hell. In summary, Flight from Macau to Beijing at noon, flight from Beijing to Frankfurt 9 hours later, miss the connecting flight in Frankfurt to Barcelona because there are infinite people in the Frankfurt airport, spend probably around 2 hours getting a new connecting flight, get to Barcelona and am unable to exchange HKD because they aren't showing up in the currency office's computer. At this point let me add that the tournament that stars in 2 hours which neither me nor friend Steve who's traveling with me are bought into, and we only have enough cash for one of us to play. So whatever we're sure we'll figure something out, but then, here's a twist, our luggage is lost! We talk to some people in charge of that stuff and they tell us that the airline says it got lost in Beijing because there wasn't enough time to get it on the flight to frankfurt...riiiiight. Anyway, get to the hotel we're staying at, borrow shoes and pants from a friend because the dress code in the Casino is strict and I'm wearing shorts and sandals. When we get to the Casino we get our names on the alternate list because the tournament is full and by some random mysterious luck we run into Shaun ****ing Deeb who comes up clutch when he tells me he has 14k USD he can lend me. Thanks again Shaun, owe you one.

We both ended up being able to play and both made day two, but then both busted early on day two. I actually felt like I played very well, but such is tournament poker. Our friend Randal Flower(randallin online) went real deep but busted in 14th. Blah, was fun to sweat though.

After enjoying Barcelona for a few days and beginning the process of losing money in WCOOP's we decided to head to Amsterdam for a week or so during the in between time of EPT Barcelona and WSOPE to just check out the city(which is really cool) and play the rest of the WCOOP.

As of now I'll be leaving for London sometime soon and hopefully winning some live tournaments. I'll also be back on the grind during the next month or so because as you guys can see, this stuff adds up. I'll probably be playing more midstakes and try to grind out some stress free money both hu and 6m.

That's all for now, gl at the tables kids.

After turning stone came to an end I chilled out for a little while before flying to macau at the very end of august. surprisingly, a 21 hour trip turned out to be relatively easy with the longest flight being business class. Fwiw, I strongly reccommend anyone who can spend the money on business class to do it for long flights. After arriving in macau on September 2nd I met up with bond18 and we got some traditional chinese food. Later he introduced me to some cool people and we played mini golf at the venetian(2nd biggest building in the world). The course is really awesome that kind of overlooks the city, nonetheless I obviously lost some insignificant amount of money prop betting per hole.

I played day 1c yesterday on the 3rd and didn't play any interesting hands really and was only all in when called once and the guy had no outs. The only hand of interest would be a hand at the 1-2 no ante level where HJ opened who was Terrence Chan(world class limit player, unassigned online) to 500 and I flat AQo in sb w/ 9k effective stacks. It comes KJ8r chk chk. Turn T bringing a fd w/ the 8, I bet 900 into 1200, he makes it 2200. I decide that he's either bluffing, has TT/AQ and wants to stack off, or maybe has JT and is probably raise/folding. Thinking about it later though being a limit player he might make free showdown raises so I think my best line is to call and donk blank rivers. As it was I called and checked a 6o and he snap checked behind and mucked. Oh, well.

I had 22.6k going into day 2 w/ blinds starting at 400-800/100. I missed the first 3 minutes because I forgot my players card in the room which resulted in me missing an orbit or so. When I sat down I lost some chips folding and had to raise/fold KQs utg w/ 23bbs or so. 2 hands later EP opens for the 2nd hand in a row and I have QQ in sb w/ 20bbs, I ship it in, he snaps, and I'm drawing nearly dead to AA when it comes akx.

The high roller event($19,250 USD) starts in 2 days so hopefully I can run good there and hit n run macau before leaving for EPT Barcelona on the 9th. After that tournament has run it's course we'll have two weeks to just chill in Europe before EPT london and WSOPE begin. If anyone is in the same boat holler at me and lemme know what you're up to.

best wishes,
-andrew

so although i had planned to have a 100k month in june, i had to settle for one in july. i'm really happy with how i'm playing lately and hope to have continued success and continue moving up in stakes. i'm also pretty happy that poker still interests me despite all the grinding i've been doing lately, and after i get over strep i'm eager to get back on the grind.

i'm going to make some videos(already made two) and will make a few more over the next few days, so if anyone has suggestions/requests feel free to tell me. off topic but baskin robbins makes realllly good smoothies.

anyway, i'm back home in northport for a week or so having returned a few days ago from chicago where i was seeing lollapalooza with some friends. was fun for my first experience at a music festival but man are they(festivals, specifically 3 day ones) physically draining! lots of walking and standing, by the end of each day you're ready to pass out for sure. after my week in northport expires, i'm back on the road for a while - first stop will be NC for a jack johnson concert, then back to turning stone for the august series, then indy to chill w/ the one and only AEJONES. after that in the beginning of september i'll be in macau, where i'll then head over to barcelona, and finally london for ept/wsope before coming back to North America in middish october for WPT niagara.

that's all for now, i'm definitely excited for some of these big live tournaments and hope i can bink a nice score real quick.

gl at the tables,

-andrew

so, lately i've been on the massive grind, putting in lots of hands(mostly all hu nl) in attempt to constantly improve my game and increase my roll. first things first, i'll just say how funny it is how many regulars will literally ONLY play johnny123456789, and i imagine if he raised the button more than 2 times in 10 hands he'd get quit too. but whatever, it is what it is, they're protecting their bottom line by not playing in bad games and i can't really blame them for it, it's just infuriating sometimes when they get the fishes action and i don't get the fish(or them). fortunately i feel like this happens less often than it doesn't. anyway, at this point i'm enjoying the challenge of playing just about anyone, and have only really run into trouble in a few spots which makes me feel pretty good about myself. if i can make roughly a million before the wsop starts next year i'll be feeling really good.

on a different note, the summer is winding down and i'll be leaving the beach house and jersey for good. i'm looking to get a place with a friend somewhere in a place like florida/cali/hawaii. any thoughts are welcomed, that's all for now, gl at the tables kids.

a few days ago at the beach while we were skim boarding(which is quite fun and i would recommend anyone tries) we kept moving further down the beach to get to better areas of the shoreline to skim. after we finished up and were walking back, as we got to the area where we put our stuff down we saw it was all ruffled and moved around. obviously being the optimist i am i thought dan took our stuff back to the house, but that was just wishful thinking at it's best. unfortunately but fortunately, we immediately got word from one of the people sitting near our stuff that two kids ran up, quickly took me and steve's wallets and phones and ran away. that said, they did give us a fairly descriptive description of the kids and as we were walking towards the boardwalk one of our friends was holding steves wallet and said the kids had thrown it in one of the many trashcans after taking all the cash out of it. this gave me a glimmer of hope as i don't really care about the $160 some odd dollars i had in my wallet nearly as much as i care about my license, credit cards, health insurance card, etc etc. after checking the same trash can though i was left sifting through random peoples garbage and no wallet.

we walked down the boardwalk a little while and reported the situation to a cop who basically told us that there is little to no chance of getting our stuff back, which is understandable and i'm glad the cop was honest rather than bull****ting us that everything will turn up blah blah blah. so at this point i'm just furious that some ***** kids are going to make me go out of my way to do a ton of work to get my stuff back. i decide my best bet is to walk back to the part of the beach where we found steves wallet, and check the other garbage cans nearby. the first i check is a swing and a solid miss, but jeff(jschnett) immediately sees my wallet sitting atop a pile of garbage in the first can he looks at. luckily all my stuff is still there with the exception of the cash obviously.

so at this point all me and steve are out is ~$260 and our phones, which is a bigger deal for him than me cause he has an iphone and i just have a ****ty nextel. after coming back to the house i sign online and get a message from my dad telling me that my phone is at a store on the boardwalk and i can go pick it up. i get there and the owner tells me they are closing and someone was there but didn't leave the phone there, which i wasn't too worried about because i couldn't imagine not getting the phone back after someone went out of their way to get in contact with me and help me out. sure enough the next morning i went back and they had the phone there, luckily, because it had died at that point. steve still hasn't gotten his phone back yet and it doesn't look too good at this point, but there is a new iphone coming out in a few weeks which he likely would have upgraded to anyway.

all in all, i realized plain and simple that i'm just not careful enough. i don't protect my stuff as well as i should and it never worried me until this. it's sort of one of those things that i never worried about too much because i just(stupidly) never thought it'd happen. i mean, i obviously knew there was a chance it could always happen, but it was never a priority in my mind to be as careful as i should be for whatever reason. i suppose it may have been worth it for me to lose that $160 if it prevents me from losing more money/more expensive stuff in the future.

mocking seabeast, obv. =]

so on saturday i finally got to the beach house in jersey and so far it's been awesome. the beach is really close, the kids we're hanging out with are really chill, the area seems great, and the simple idea that 4 of us can support ourselves and have the financial freedom to do basically whatever we want because of the dedication we put into poker is really satisfying(for me at least). as far as poker goes, i'm really going to try to put a lot of volume in over the next couple of months and hopefully the results follow. i've actually decided to have a 100k month, so let's hope i can do that. gl at the tables fellas.